RIAA Loss Report Contradicts Nielsen Sales Record 348
DerekAtLC writes "In a not-so-surprising twist of the tables, RIAA reporting of 'losses' is a little bit off. An interesting blurb at Ars Technica referencing a Kensei News article points out that Nielsen's Soundscan (Which tracks retail point-of-sale numbers for the music industry) shows a 10% increase in sales from Q1 2003 to Q1 2004. The RIAA has recently reported drops in revenue from last year, citing online piracy as the main problem. The crux of the issue? The RIAA hasn't been talking about sales or revenue in terms of sales to consumers or money generated via those sales. The RIAA talks about losses in terms of number of units shipped to retail outlets. The article points out plenty of problems with this (and reasons why we are seeing the trend), but it is fairly obvious that the RIAA is not reporting the most 'useful' numbers to the public."
Dont forget (Score:5, Informative)
Well it makes since if you factor in.... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How Exactly is That Different (Score:5, Informative)
The RIAA's numbers are at least correct counts of what they're supposed to be representing. However, consumers are paying less for music doesn't ring too when it's the wholesale transactions going down but not the number of retail transations. That just says there's less CDs sitting unsold on shelves these days...
Re:What else is new? (Score:2, Informative)
Binary numbers are numbers that are a power of 2. Decimal numbers are numbers that are a power of 10.
2^10 is 1,024 the closest Decimal number is 10^3 or 1,000 2^20 is 1,048,576 The closest Decimal number is 10^6 or 1,000,000 2^30 is 1,073,741,824 The closest Decimal number is 10^9 or 1,000,000,000
Now lets look at common terms: Kilo means 1 thousand Mega means 1 million Giga means 1 billion Tera means 1 Trillion
1000/1024 =
Noticing a trend yet?
At the Kilobyte size the difference is about 2.34% While at the Gigabyte stage the difference is 6.86% Since we're living in the day where it's relatively easy to put a full terrabyte of storage in your computer that "close enough" is becoming further and further from "close enough" At the Terrabyte level the difference is getting very close to 10%
Would you want to buy a hard drive that is labeled as 2^35 byte hard drive? Or would you rather see a 500Gb drive? I don't want anybody ever having to pull out a calculator to figure out how big their hard drive is!
Windows is the one reporting things wrong! Not your manufacturer. Windows does the binary calculations and then displays GB next to it. When GB is technically wrong due to it's definition. What it is actually displaying is the GiB size.
Since the GB number will always be so much higher than the GiB number it's a safe bet to assume that the hard drive manufacturers won't convert to using the GiB format. Memory manufacturers on the other hand are doing things right. You don't see then selling 1Gb of RAM as 1,073Mb do ya? It gets VERY confusing in the hardware world due to some people using 1 standard while they other group using the other one.
Re:Easy.. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No surprise there (Score:2, Informative)
don't worry, the only place we'll be hearing about this kind of news is in the little news outlets and blogs.
Re:What else is new? (Score:2, Informative)
That's because whenever a HDD is listed in GB's, it is using the calculation of 1,000MB = 1GB. The reality is that 1024MB = 1GB. That's why your 80GB HDD is 74.5GB when formatted.
In other words, 1,024KB = 1,048,576MB = 1,073,741,824GB. But the hard drive manufacturers use a simplified calculation and assume that 1,000KB = 1,000,000MB = 1,000,000,000GB which is completely wrong.
lets setup a shell to 'stuff the channel' (Score:3, Informative)
This is nothing new (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What else is new? (Score:4, Informative)
i do actually hope that the above was a rhetoric question... but just for the heck of it:
Giga is defined (in almost all of science) as 10^9; therefore 80GB = 80 * 10^9 Byte.
Computer Scientists have calculated most data sizes in exponents of "2"; therefore it is common to write KB as 2^10 Byte, MB as 2^20 Byte and GB as 2^30 Byte; this is also how your operating system will output your HDD capacity.
Recently it has been tried to introduce the units Mebibyte (MiB) and Gibibyte (GiB) for the exponents of "2", but it might still take quite a while (or may never happen) that the majority of computer scientists and the industry will switch to the new notation.
thus it is (due to ill-defined units) more or less correct to write:
80GB = 80 * 2^30 Byte = 8.59 * 10^10 Byte = 86GB
obviously it should really be written as 80GiB = 86GB, but such is our beloved computer science
yet, most likely you already knew that... well, next time better put the <irony> tags *gg*
Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine (Score:3, Informative)
Copyright infringement is not theft.
If you believe it is, fine. However, you disagree with the American justice system, and a long tradition of anglo-saxon jurisprudence. Theft is depriving someone of something. If you copy someone's song when you have no right to do so, they still have their song. What you've done is infringe on their rights to copies of that song.
Re:Funny numbers?!?! (Score:1, Informative)
It makes sense with their way of thinking... (Score:4, Informative)
Just because a person has 4,000 songs doesn't mean that they would've purchased ALL of those CDs had they not had the means to download them... but the RIAA stands firm in their belief that this is possible.
Re:Out of business stores dont keep inventory. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I don't think it matters (Score:3, Informative)
Exactly. They have been using these numbers to scare government officials into thinking that if they don't take away our rights, the music and movie industries will collapse. The results of this include:
The DCMA
This law makes it illegal to decrypt copywritten files, possibly even illegal to create and discuss decryption methods, if they can be used for piracy. It is dangerous because it is written in a way that says all decryption is illegal except these few vague exceptions, rather than the tradional method of stating everything is legal except these exact items. One effect of this is that many things which were once considered fair-use are now illegal. Another effect is that many industries have attempted to use the law to create proprietary lock-in to thier product, hurting competitive markets.
The Broadcast bit.
The FCC has regulated that all televisions produced after a certain date, have digital recievers which respect a broadcast bit preventing one from copying that data. Again, many types of copying that were once considered fair use, will now be illegal to to the DCMA and enforced by your equipment. This will raise the cost of consumer devices, take away your rights, and make it more difficult to produce your own content (ie camcorder).
Excessive internet radio fees.
Which make it economically impossible for anyone but big business to broadcast radio over the internet legaly. Even if you are not broadcasting any RIAA music, it is your resposibility to provide complete documentation of this - ie guilty until proven innocent, so even that is impractical.
All of these hurt citizens of this country, do not benefit the artists, and create an unfair advantage for the existing large media companies.
#2 is a big one (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Dont forget (Score:5, Informative)
No. It was a hypothetical example, because no one listens to Creed.
It's time to change sampling techniques? (Score:5, Informative)
If you're read Alvin Toffler's book The Third Wave, Toffer some 25 years ago said that as more communications choices for consumers become available, old means to measuring "eyeballs" won't work anymore. I mean look at what has happened since The Third Wave was published in 1979:
1. Consumers now possess the technology to time shift TV programming by videocassette recorders and increasing digital Personal Video Recorders, which is making the idea of prime time meaningless.
2. The choice of TV programming has literally increased exponentially. Back in 1979, most Americans could only watch at most 5-7 channels of TV programming on over-air broadcasts; today, cable TV has expanded the available channels to over 70 and small-dish satellite TV has expanded the available channels to over 200!
3. The rise of pre-recorded videocassettes and now DVD's have drastically altered the landscape of both movies and TV programming. Indeed, many movies are only breaking even with home video sales (or doubling their profit with home video sales!) and there's now the new trend of complete TV seasons available on DVD! I'm sure HBO has enjoyed healthy sales of full seasons of The Sopranos, Sex and the City, and Six Feet Under on DVD sets.
4. The rise of the public Internet has also started to affect TV viewership, as several recent surveys have shown.
5. Current methods of measuring TV viewership don't take into account the increasing trend of large scale public viewing of TV programs at public gathering places and/or having a large group of friends watching the program at someone's residence. For example, the final episode of Friends probably got underreported by Neilsen tracking because a large portion of viewers probably saw it in a group setting either in a public place or at a private residence with a large living room.
6. Tracking sales of music will have to be revamped, especially in light of the way Wal-Mart handles sales inventories, the sheer retail power of Best Buy, the heavy use of online sales at Amazon and Barnes & Noble web sites, and individual song downloads at various legal sites such as Apple's iTunes web site.
I think if the various media companies actually bother to change their way of monitoring sales/viewership they could actually get a far more accurate measurement, something that could eliminate underreporting of actual sales/viewership.
Re:More Mega-Store Efficiencies and Other Trends (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know if this is a trend everywhere, but it seems to be true for Norway. First quarter this year, the sale of Norwegian CDs* was up by 46% volume (54% value) compared to the same period last year. 21% per cent of the CDs sold were Norwegian, up from 14% last year.
* Not including singles and DVDs, which probably would have pushed the numbers even higher.
Ref: Sterk økning i salg av norsk musikk [www.dn.no] (in Norwegian, I'm afraid ...:)